


Taming My Ancient Rudeness

by jesterlady



Category: Roswell (TV 1999)
Genre: Alien Flashes, Alien/Human Relationships, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, First Time, Intervention, One Shot, Romance, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 07:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17845058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: Liz intervenes, Michael thinks, and Maria gets flashes





	Taming My Ancient Rudeness

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell. Some lines are from the show. The title is by LM Montgomery.

Michael slammed open the door to the classroom and maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, but if he hadn’t slammed it open, he would have exploded it open, and using his alien powers probably wasn’t such a good thing to do in the middle of his very normal high school in front of his very normal classmates.

“Ah, Mr. Guerin, how good of you to join us,” said Mr. Summers, taking off his glasses. “Perhaps it would be too much to expect you to be on time.”

“Sorry, sir,” Michael muttered and slid into his seat beside Liz.

She looked questioningly at him before looking over his shoulder at the window in the door where he was sure Maria was still standing, probably looking disapprovingly at him.

Liz’s mouth tightened but she didn’t say anything, simply slid her notes over for him to look at. He appreciated that. Liz might be great at writing every single detail of her feelings down, but she never tried to communicate them to him, and he was beyond grateful for that. He had enough people in his life needling and demanding things from him.

“Guerin and Parker, you’ll be covering the library,” Mr. Summers said and Michael’s head shot up, hearing his name and nothing else.

He looked at Liz and she beckoned him to follow her.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“We’re supposed to interview the librarians for our project,” she said.

“Perfect,” he said, sighing, following her.

Well, at least it got him out of a classroom. If he was lucky Liz would do all the work, which she did really. However, after the lame interview she asked him to actually write up the stupid report with her. He flopped down at the wooden table and began idly tapping his pen on his notebook.

“Care to tell me what it was all about?” Liz finally asked, ten minutes later.

He marveled at her ability to wait that long. Maria would’ve been on him within the first ten seconds.

“It’s nothing,” he said automatically.

Liz sighed and put down her pencil.

“Look, Michael, normally I try and stay out of your relationship, but Maria is my best friend and I’m going to hear about it from her so why don’t you just tell me?”

“Do you two really talk about…everything?” he asked instead, feeling very uncomfortable at the idea.

“Pretty much,” she said and he shuddered inwardly.

Maybe it was payback for reading her journal.

“It’s nothing, she just wants me to do this stupid couple’s day and I don’t have time for crap like that,” he said. “It’s no big deal, she’ll get over it.”

Liz studied him for a minute or two, then picked her pencil back up and carefully avoided his eyes while she asked him a question.

“Why do you want to be with Maria?”

“What?”

He guessed he’d been wrong; Liz was going to try and dig into his personal life after all. Well, nothing good lasted forever.

“Why do you want to be with Maria?” Liz asked again, still not looking at him. “You two fight all the time, break up all the time. You constantly push her away and belittle what she wants, so is there an actual reason why you want to be in a relationship with her?”

“It’s none of your business,” he snapped, not happy with the direction this conversation was taking.

“Humor me,” she said. “Like I said, she’s my best friend.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Maybe the whole thing is just physical.” Liz giggled, actually giggled, and he didn’t know what to do with that. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

Liz looked at him again and smiled.

“Michael, I know you two haven’t had sex.”

“Would you tell the whole world already?” he asked, looking around the admittedly mostly empty library.

“Sorry,” Liz said, speaking in a marginally quieter voice. “Despite how…far you have gone, I know it can’t just be hormones.”

“Maybe I’m trying to blend in,” he said, wishing she would just drop it.

“Maybe,” she said, and then looked hard at him, “but I don’t think so. See, you’ve had your whole life to blend in and you’ve never dated anyone steadily as far as I know. You’ve never dated the same girl twice, let alone done all the things you and Maria have done.”

“Yeah, well, Maria knows and she doesn’t give up easily,” he muttered.

“No, she doesn’t,” Liz agreed. “So, is that why? You’re just biding your time with the one person you don’t have to hide from until you get to joyride out of here on a spaceship?”

He didn’t like the way she said that.

“No,” he said reluctantly. “It’s not that.”

“Help me out, Michael.”

Michael studied her for a minute or two before grabbing his chair and straddling it to face her fully. What the hell. These were all things he felt and saying them to Liz was easier than saying them to Maria. They might just get told to her and get her off his back and it wasn’t like they weren’t true.

“Maria’s…she’s open. What you see is what you get with her. She gets under my skin and challenges what I think. She’s funny and beautiful and I like listening to her sing. She’s always there, even when you want her to go away. She…for whatever reason, she wants to be with me even though I’m…”

“An alien?” Liz supplied gently.

“Sure, that,” he said, even though what he’d really meant was a giant, broken mess.

“Have you ever told her that?” Liz asked.

“What, no, why would I do that?” he asked, genuinely confused. “I don’t even know why I told you.”

Liz laughed again and he felt frustrated because it felt like everybody did that with him. They laughed at what he said or they yelled at him for things. He never knew why and then they wondered why he stayed away from people and disappointed them.

“I don’t mean to laugh,” Liz said. “Michael, I know you’re an alien, but you grew up a human. Don’t you know how humans normally interact in relationships?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “Why should I?”

“Because you’re in one with one,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Now, I get that this likely doesn’t come naturally for you and maybe you didn’t have really great examples to go off, but any relationship, human or alien, it’s got to involve some give and take on both parts.”

“Yeah, well, all she wants is take,” he insisted. “I can’t do anything right.”

“She can be pushy,” Liz agreed. “Maybe she needs to work on realizing that what you have to give might be different than her expectations, but that doesn’t let you off the hook of giving what you do have to give and understanding what she needs.”

“That all sounds like romantic crap,” Michael said.

Liz shrugged and went back to her notebook.

“Maybe, but like I said, that’s how relationships work and that’s what you’re in. So, if you want to be with Maria for all those reasons you said, you might want to try and work on it. And try not to hurt my friend.”

“Hurt her?” he asked, desperately needing clarification since he knew he hurt her all the time, but half the time he didn’t know how.

“You both have feelings, Michael,” Liz said. “And the longer you hide yours from her, the more she’s going to vent hers at you and push for things you don’t want. Because it’s the only way she knows to be close to you. But if you keep ignoring her feelings, one day she’s not going to get over it. She won’t come back.”

“Oh,” he said, because it was the only thing he could say.

Sometimes it felt so stupid, the fact that he and Maria were a thing at all. But whenever he thought about not being with her, it was like his insides were caving in. If anyone else ever tried to hurt her, he’d rip them apart with his bare hands. But maybe the person who hurt her the most…maybe that was him.

“She loves you, Michael, you just have to meet her halfway,” Liz said.

Whether she had intended them to or not, Liz’s words haunted Michael for the rest of the day. He thought about them through his last period and his shift at the Crash Down and when he walked back into his apartment to find Maria asleep on his bed. She’d probably come over to yell at him some more and then fallen asleep, waiting.

He stood in the doorway staring at her for a while, thinking about what Liz had said, oddly grateful for the intervention even if he didn’t understand it just yet.

It was true he didn’t really know how to do relationships. Maria seemed to know exactly how to do them. But half the stuff she wanted, he thought was crap. How did that work? How did other people make this work? Meet her halfway? Would she do that? Maria always seemed all or nothing, taking everything he gave her and demanding more. It was exhausting.

But he knew Liz was right, that he hid his feelings. It’s just he knew that he hid his feelings from Maria because he was scared of anyone seeing them. Yet maybe that was what she really wanted when she asked him for anniversary presents and to do date nights and act like he wasn’t secretly in hiding from the government. 

He pushed his hair back and thought about how she was always on him to cut it. She said he looked like a greasy underling to a mob boss. He just didn’t care about his hair. What did it matter what he looked like on the outside when on the inside he was an alien? One day he’d go back to Antar and he’d be fighting in a war. Let him have a short soldier’s haircut then, but now, now let him just have any haircut he wanted.

Except it was important to her, and Isabel, who was somehow the expert on all these types of things agreed with Maria. Maybe he shouldn’t be stubborn over something so simple. It just…well, it felt important because it was simple. His life was so complicated, she was complicated, and he was overwhelmed. Somehow the idea of fighting in an intergalactic war he’d never been trained for, but somehow had the genetic ability to do, was less stressful than opening up to the woman he loved. Maybe he should stop running from that. He’d been running his whole life, toward the unknown, away from pain, anywhere but where he was. Nothing could fill the giant need inside of him. The only thing that came close was his bond with Max and Isabel and…Maria.

He turned away from watching her and headed into the bathroom. He grabbed scissors and he began to cut. His hair was still pretty slicked back and long on top, but at least the strands ended above his neck so they didn’t look like he was trying for some weird mullet. He inspected his head in the mirror and pondered on what it meant to actually be brave. Wasn’t that his role? Wasn’t he supposed to protect and advise and lay down his life? But how unfair to ask him to do that when his entire life had been spent being beaten and told he was worthless. How could he give something so rotten to someone as good and wonderful as Maria?

But this half-life he lived and gave to her wasn’t perfect either. Maybe, just maybe there was a way across the divide. He just had to be courageous enough to try it. If she didn’t want it, if she ran away, well, there was always his destiny. It just would hurt like hell.

He thought about Max and Liz and not how they were now, with Liz pushing him away and Max getting closer to Tess, but how they’d been all of last year, before the White Room and before they found out who they were. He’d envied them so much sometimes, because for them it was so easy. They just gave to each other and it was the outside world that drove them apart. See, he didn’t think it would be so easy for him. He couldn’t even give Maria flashes because he was so terrified she’d see something inside of him that she didn’t like and run away. That was his theory anyway and he was pretty sure it was true. He saw things inside of her all of the time and it was because she was so open, so trusting, and he didn’t deserve any of it. 

But maybe that needed to change. He was petrified of it, but tonight, somehow he knew it was necessary.

He went back to his room and got into bed beside her, she mumbled in her sleep, but curled up in his arms anyway, naturally seeking his warmth. Maybe it was because they spent a lot of nights like this when her mom was out of town like she was now and Maria’s body forgot that it was supposed to be mad at him. He kissed her forehead and he began to whisper things into her ear, things similar to what he’d told Liz, but things he didn’t think he could ever tell Maria to her face. 

He told her how much he admired her, her strength, her beauty, her intelligence, even her weaknesses and her insecurities. He loved her dreams, her passion, her creativity, her words, and her voice. She was too good for him because he was broken. He was no one’s first choice, alien or human, but somehow she stayed. He didn’t know what she wanted or how to give it to her. He didn’t know how he was supposed to behave as a human and sometimes he resented that she expected him to. He was angry at the world, at himself, at his destiny, at his situation, at having to hide, at being expected to leave, at not knowing who he had been before, at not being allowed to be himself now. He couldn’t control his powers like the others and he couldn’t naturally be a good boyfriend for her and he was sick and tired of fighting. So sick and tired of fighting himself.

He let himself cry while he talked to her because she was the only person he’d ever let himself cry in front of and she was sleeping. He wore his voice out talking. He didn’t even notice that as he cradled her while she slept, his hands were glowing. Maybe he fell asleep, maybe he didn’t, but he knew it was a long time later when he suddenly realized she was awake.

“Michael?” she said and her voice was wondering.

He looked down at her and she was staring at him, her hand reaching up to touch his hair.

“You like it?” he asked, a touch defensive. “Happy now?”

“Well, you clearly did it yourself, but, yes,” she said. “I’ll fix it later.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly.

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“Because you wanted me to,” he said sincerely.

She slowly smiled and reached up to kiss him.

“I had a dream,” she said after she pulled away and he tensed.

“A dream?” he asked.

“You were talking to me,” she said. “I felt it so strongly and the things you said, Michael, how could I know the things you said?”

“What things?” he asked, suddenly afraid and curious and hopeful at the same time.

“I think you know what things,” she said. “I think you said them to me while I was dreaming.”

“I can’t dreamwalk,” he said.

“You weren’t in my dream, but you let me hear you,” she insisted.

“I don’t think I’m capable-” he started to say.

“I don’t need you to be perfect,” she said, framing his face with her hands. “I just need you to try. I’ll try, too, I promise. I won’t expect things from you that aren’t you.”

“What, what are you saying?” he asked, not quite knowing what was happening.

“I think you spoke to me in my dream because that was the only way you could tell me what you needed me to know.”

“You were sleeping when I said those things,” he said, his voice shaking.

How was it she was the one not freaking out about unexplained alien powers and he was terrified?

She put her thumb down the tear tracks on his face, just like she’d done the last time he’d come to her broken at night.

“But you have beautiful and amazing and unknown powers, Michael.”

“Do I?” he asked, because most of the time he felt like it was the opposite.

His powers were explosive and dangerous and uncontrollable.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I love you for and in spite of and apart from them.”

She kissed his temple and his cheek and the corner of his mouth in conjunction with her words.

“I love you, too,” he said shakily. “I’m sorry about, about everything.”

“So am I,” she whispered. “And we’ll fix it, together, okay?”

“Okay,” he said and for the first time in a very long time, he felt hopeful that he wouldn’t screw something up. She kissed him again, gently but with passion behind it. Somehow he knew they were about to go somewhere they hadn’t gone before. “Are you sure?” he asked her, his hands touching her waist and her neck.

“I’m ready,” she said.

They kissed long and slowly together, hands gentle and heartbeats erratic. He felt more vulnerable than he’d ever felt. He wouldn’t trade being here than anywhere else in the universe. His body was doing things he was fairly certain weren’t normal for a human and, by the sounds she was making, she was feeling them, too.

He wanted to be close to her, wanted to give her everything, every last broken and bloody piece of him. He was done hiding, done running from normal, and even if his pride didn’t want to admit he just didn’t know how this was supposed to work, he would try.

“Maria,” he said and explained his theory on why she couldn’t see flashes. “I’ve never let anyone see me before. There are things inside me that I don’t want people to see. There’s things inside me that I’m not so proud of. But I’ve thought about it and I want you to see me,” he said, finally prepared to give what he’d always held back, that final wall that kept her from flashing and seeing into his soul.

He kissed her again and she gasped underneath him, while he plunged into her memories, watching a cascade of images of Maria, each one perfect and annoying, just like her. He loved her so much.

“I can see you, Michael,” she said and she somehow didn’t sound repulsed. “This time I can really see you.”

He focused on that then, showing her, molding how he felt into something she could touch and feel. It was all he had to give; he knew nothing about how to be the perfect boyfriend, all he knew was how he felt.

When it was all over, Maria curled her bare skin into his side and he knew from every torturous sex ed class he’d ever been forced to take that what he was feeling was not normal for humans. He’d never been so glad to be an alien.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She grinned at him.

“Are you kidding? Michael, you should bottle and sell that.”

He flushed, pleased.

“Glad to know I can do something right,” he said and he was only half-joking.

“No more of that,” she said, kissing the words from his lips. “You gave me you and that’s all I want.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

“And that’s all I need,” she answered.

He believed her. For the first time in his life, he believed.

**Author's Note:**

> So halfway through watching S2, I got the idea to write a fic wherein Michael reasoned that the reason Maria never got flashes was because he was blocking her from doing so...then I watched the Departure and turns out I was right. I decided to incorporate the idea into another idea...that anyone, anyone should intervene in Michael and Maria's relationship and talk some sense into them. Michael is clearly 10 years behind everyone else on relationships and social skills and since Maria is too close to the situation to patiently explain things to him, why couldn't someone else do it? The only person who ever tried to do anything was Alex and he just punched Michael. Granted, he deserved it at the time, but it didn't do anything useful. So I just wanted someone to point some obvious (but not to him) issues to Michael and get his brain moving. I'm thinking this should be set S2 maybe between Vegas and Prom.


End file.
